I'm sure there is someone working hard and putting the paper out every day, but this sounds like an old, black-and-white movie in which someone walks into the cockpit of a plane and finds that there is no pilot or co-pilot.

What does that do to morale of the staff, to have the top man jump to the competition?

I know that SEs are working stiffs, too, in most cases. But in the relative world of a sports department, and leadership and all that, mustn't this feel like the captain of the Titanic jumping into the lifeboat ahead of even Billy Zane?